


For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings

by liminalweirdo, slowlimbs



Series: when we hit the city limits don't forget me for a minute (tonight) [5]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: (Mrs. K), Anal Sex, Bisexual Richie Tozier, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Power Bottom Eddie Kaspbrak, Service Top Richie Tozier, Sonia Kaspbrak's A+ Parenting, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:40:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28856733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liminalweirdo/pseuds/liminalweirdo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/slowlimbs/pseuds/slowlimbs
Summary: In a cabin in the mountains, Richie unpacks a box that brings to light new memories, a shared aversion to blackberries is explained, and Eddie vomits into the kitchen sink.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: when we hit the city limits don't forget me for a minute (tonight) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1994314
Comments: 10
Kudos: 40





	For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Shakespeare's [Sonnet 29](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45090/sonnet-29-when-in-disgrace-with-fortune-and-mens-eyes).

Just before summer, Richie signs off on his lease termination papers, and by late-August they’re moving their things into a log cabin in the mountains. It’s the first time Richie’s ever signed onto a mortgage in his life, but both their names are on it, this time — the new ID stuff for Eds that Bev had been working on came through several months before — and it’s surreal, he thinks, to see their names written in full on the document. It’s surreal because he never in his wildest dreams imagined he would end up somewhere like this.

As a kid he hadn’t imagined where he would live at all. He would have been fine with anything really. He thinks that, at fifteen, sixteen, he was probably still very seriously considering living in a treehouse. Sometimes he spent nights at the clubhouse all alone because it was better than the silence of his own house. 

Just him and the transistor radio, whispering into the night.

The log cabin is, admittedly, gorgeous, but the wooden walls, the fireplace, the living room windows facing west… it doesn’t feel too nice for him. Seeing the outside, the two of them climbing out of the Cadillac, months and months ago, Richie had thought _this isn’t for me_ until they stepped inside.

It felt, a little, like the clubhouse. Just a little. Maybe it was the wooden walls or the skylight in the funny little corridor near the kitchen. Maybe it was the quiet, out here. Maybe it was the way Eddie’s face lit up… it felt right. It feels even more right, now, with all of their things inside. 

Eddie had made him buy a better couch, but the bed is the same, and the plates and cups with their familiar chips and scrapes. They settle in, little by little. They drink coffee on the porch in the mornings. Richie quits smoking again (for a few months, anyway) because it feels fucked up to poison the air out here. And in the middle of some butter-soft afternoon, Richie carves their initials again on the porch railing and doesn’t say a thing about it. 

There’s still unpacking to do. As Richie is want to do, he puts it off. It’s all the stuff that’s been in boxes for ages anyway. Boxes labelled ‘misc’ and ‘extra stuff’ and even a very battered cardboard box from when he left his family home for college labelled, ‘Richie’s room’. That’s embarrassing, he thinks. It’s only been waiting twenty years to be unpacked.

Still, it’s easy to avoid. Clutter doesn’t get to him the way it gets to Eddie. He shoves them into the back of the hall closet and forgets about them.

Eddie, however… 

Eddie decidedly _isn’t_ cool with it. Not at all. But he’s fine with Richie disappearing to write while he sorts it out until finally, finally, it’s just that battered old box. Eddie wrinkles his nose as he takes it through to the kitchen, because it stinks of weed and damp and— Richie looks lovely. By the fireplace. In his slippers, holding a pen and a pad.

“Hey, I need to run to the store,” and he thinks _blackberry pie_ , shakes it away because he knows he’s allergic. He knows. “Can you just get through this one for me? It’s the last one.” Crosses the room to drop a kiss to his head. “Did you want anything while I’m out?”

“We need coffee,” Richie says, and then, almost sly, “And chocolate ice cream. Is a thing we need.” He sits up straighter, setting down his writing which, actually, finally, is coming along — he’s written one complete set and is waiting, now, on feedback while he starts a new one. The worst part, he thinks, is getting into the rhythm of writing _and_ memorizing _and_ performing material himself but it’s just like listening to an album a few times — after a while you just kind of _get it_. 

He pulls the box towards himself and wrestles it open in an incredible poof of dust. “Wow,” he says. “Jesus.”

“I promise to come back with desserts.” Eddie says, thick through the dirt, then sneezes. “Fucking hell.” Peers into the box and pulls a face. “God. Yeah. I’m out of here. Have fun.” And he bends at the waist to kiss him properly, kiss him fully. Thinks _blackberries_ and rolls his eyes at himself, then gets his shoes on. He blows a final kiss from the front door and locks it after himself purely out of habit. Safety. No clowns here.

Richie gives him the finger in response, even as he’s laughing because Eddie Kaspbrak is kind of his own brand of crazy (sweet, lovely) and sometimes he still gets that wild, reckless energy to just Go Off. Either get some chucks or die trying — blow off steam, pick on each other, forget there’s even anyone else in the room.

He hears the car and stares dismally into the box and thinks that if he’s going to get through this shit, he’s going to need another cup of coffee. He debates adding some rye to it and then, because he is a goddamn adult, finds the sugar and makes a bastardized Irish Coffee and then returns to the box and kind of empties it out all at once, haphazardly onto the floor. There actually is weed in there, “hidden” at the bottom of an old green Pepsi bottle that, when he shakes it out onto the table, mostly sticks to the bottom and looks like it’s gone off about a hundred years ago — there’s mold on it. “Little creep,” he says, meaning Richie Tozier as a teenager thinking that a half-rinsed coke bottle was as good a place as any to keep his sister’s dank weed when he could swipe it.

He sets that aside, and then it’s about a thousand comic books, a Playboy (from 1990) — also stolen, some tapes. There’s a letter that Stanley had written him in class that goes on such a long tangent about pelicans that Richie had felt it was important to keep for posterity (and making fun of him). It goes on like this until he has a pile of stuff he _wants_ to keep bigger than a pile of stuff he’s definitely throwing away (that weed, christ) and then, near the bottom and wrapped, for some reason in an old winter scarf is—

He doesn’t remember this. It’s a book, bound in that soft rich brown calf-leather, and kept, he thinks, in much nicer condition than anything he would have. There’s not even a scratch on it, although the leather is soft. Richie’s books tend to be dog-eared and bent at the corners even when he tries to be careful. Stan wouldn’t even let him _hold_ the bird book, he remembers. 

Curious he unsnaps the flap holding it closed and flips it open on his lap and is met with pages and pages of cramped, breathless handwritten script that is, all at once, so painfully familiar he feels his breath catch. He gets snatches of sentences: _went down to the Barrens with Bill to … asthma attack and nearly DIED_ (this, underlined thrice) _… roasting hotdogs, but Ma said … literally made from animal’s assholes! …_

And Richie laughs once in disbelief. It’s Eddie’s fucking diary, why does he even have this, he wonders, but — no — it makes sense. Mrs. K never let him have any privacy and he had all sorts of little bits and knickknacks stored at their separate houses. Richie just can’t believe he’s got Eddie’s _journal_ and can’t remember ribbing him about it _once_. He can’t believe Eddie trusted him with this and not Beverly or Ben. He decides to save the ribbing for later, and by later, he means the _second_ Eddie comes home. 

Which is an hour so later. Eddie comes back, both arms full of groceries, face slapped cold and grinning. “Hey, how was the box of memories?” he asks, breathless, on his way through to the kitchen. “I got chocolate ice cream as requested, and they had a two for one on this butterscotch coffee, and I got a great deal on the creamer and— why are you smiling at me like that?” Suddenly suspicious, because Richie, who’s trailed him into the kitchen, looks like he’s won the lottery, and in Richie’s world that means he’s about to crack a joke at his expense. “What are you up to Trashmouth?”

“Dear diary,” Richie begins, leaning in the doorway and grinning so wide he feels like his fucking face is about to crack, and then produces, from behind his back, The Book, flipped open to the first page it chooses which he reads, “ ‘I am writing this under my bedsheets with a flashlight because if Ma sees my light on past eleven, she’ll be furious. Anyways,’ ” Richie laughs, because he can _hear_ Eddie’s voice, his breathless monologues. “ ‘Anyways, it’s not like not getting eight hours of sleep will kill me if I only do it once in a while—’ ”

Eddie thinks, _I never had a diary._ Then he thinks, _Did I? That sounds like my writing._ But he’s mainly confused, squinting at Richie with his eyebrows furrowed. “Is this a new bit? I hate to tell you but it’s not your best material.” Because there’s something nervous gnawing in his stomach, because he remembers writing this. He remembers hiding under his covers…

“I don’t know if you should read that Richie—.”

“Why?” he laughs, flipping through the pages for something good. “There’s a whole section in here on how hotdogs are made from, like, a pig’s asshole or something, listen…” Normally he’d help with the groceries, but he’s making sure he keeps the diary out of Eddie’s reach. He’ll likely never get it back then.

“Richie seriously, don’t.” He crosses the kitchen and makes a grab for it, box of Lucky Charms in his other hand, eyebrows raising. For once he feels like Richie is too tall. “Come on.” But he’s not going to hand it over. He can tell. Richie is like a dog with a bone, the cat with the cream, grinning so hard he’ll give himself a headache.

Eddie’s seriousness kills it a little, and Richie reaches out, catching his upper arm in his palm and holding the book open at a safe distance, effectively holding him away from it — he has shorter arms — and letting him see that the script is, clearly, his. “It’s fine,” he says. “It’s _so_ just. You at, like fourteen or something. Look you’ve dated it and everything,” he’s laughing again. “God you’re so fucking cute, Eds.” He reads again “ ‘Bev is so nice. She’s actually quiet at the movies so you can hear what’s going on — just like Ben and NOT like Richie.’ Thanks a lot, asshole,” Richie says. “I made movies _better_.”

So Eddie hides in him, groaning, face flushing pink but he’s smiling. Embarrassed, pulling Richie’s arm around him properly. “Stop.” He whines, but the urgency is gone. “No, Richie.”

Richie sets the book down on the counter as he flips through pages. “Jesus you really filled this thing up”, tucking him more comfortably into his side, as he flips almost to the very back. “Look, it’s like full.” He flips to the last few blank pages, then back to the last entry. “ ‘Dear diary,’ ” he reads “ ‘I ki—’ ”

And then he comes up short. Goes dead silent for a moment, and very still as something courses through him strongly, like being doused with cool water on a hot summer day — shocking, but not unpleasant. “ ‘I kissed Richie today…’ ”

The date, 1991.

And he thinks, _Wait, what?_ and reads silently, eyes darting across the page: 

_I kissed Richie fucking Tozier. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to feel…_

“Are you sure it says kissed and not killed?” Eddie grumbles against him, because he can’t look, and Richie’s probably making it up. But then—

Blackberries. Beestings. Bruises.

And it’s Eddie who fucking gags this time, untangles himself and sprints to the sink, standing over it.

Blackberries. Beestings. Bruises.

_Ma says we’re leaving._

Rain.

Bicycle. Storm drain. No clown. 

Distantly he’s aware that Richie is still reading to himself and when he vomits it tastes like summer fruits.

 _He tasted like cigarettes and the blackberries we’d been picking. And I don’t… know what this means. I know Ma would be angry. I want to kiss him again. Does that mean I’m…_ Richie becomes aware, sharply, of Eddie vomiting, more, somehow, than him moving because he thought he was just going to grab the diary and read it himself. He shakes himself out of it, actually shakes his head to clear it, and then he says “Jesus, Eddie,” and he’s going to him, one hand, warm, on the back of his neck. “What the fuck?” he says, and he doesn’t know if he’s talking about him getting sick, or the diary entry, or the fact that Eddie Kaspbrak just threw up into the kitchen sink and not the garbage two feet away, or all three, and distantly, the memory of a sharp, pulsing pain in his hand, this sting that’s not from the scars they made themselves.

“She hit me. When she found that.” Eddie turns the tap on, then the disposal, watches bile drain from the sink and then sticks his head under the faucet and drinks until his stomach hurts. Like he did when he crawled out of the sewer.

It’s like the way he’d crashed his car when Mike called. Sudden clear bright lights of memory. His hands are shaking just as badly now as they were then.

“And then she made me leave. And I came to see you. Because I couldn’t—.” Turns his head to look at him, sees a fourteen year old in the rain. “Keep reading.”

And suddenly Richie doesn’t want to. Suddenly he’s got the same trepidation Eddie had had a moment ago, because things like this, _strange_ things, they remind him of… 

But he does at he’s told, twisting back to pick up the book, pushing his glasses higher onto his nose. He starts over from the beginning:

_“ ‘Dear diary,_

_I kissed Richie today. I kissed Richie fucking Tozier. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to feel. He tasted like cigarettes and the blackberries we’d been picking. And I don’t… know what this means. I know Ma would be angry. I want to kiss him again. Does that mean I’m… I don’t know? I keep thinking of Bowers. He called Richie a fag, you know? I’m… worried. That he isn’t, actually, like. It might not be boys. It might be me. What if it’s me? What do I do? Like what if I’m the fag and he’s just doing it because he’s Richie and he’s getting off a good one and that would be a really fucking good joke wouldn’t it?_

_I don’t think Richie is that cruel. I take it back. He’s not like that really. He likes to make everyone think he is but then I think about clowns and dead things and Richie is neither of those. He’s just Richie. Doing the things that Richie does best._

_It’s really weird now. I can’t look Ma in the eye. I keep remembering what she said about those two men who shared a house and it always gave me the heebie jeebies, that she said that, but now I feel sort of sad about it. She thought they were gross. She’d think I was gross, too, I guess._

_I mean is it wrong for two dudes to live together? Ma wouldn’t think it was weird if I just lived with her until I was grown up. She’d like that. I don’t think I would. But then I think about what it might be like to live with Richie and I think that would be cool. I think it would be cool to live with all my friends. We could go from the clubhouse to a real house!_

_Where would we find a house with seven bedrooms?_

_You’re just a fucking book with no answers. If I end up getting AIDS… I guess I get AIDS? Can you get AIDS from kissing? I want to kiss him again. I don’t know if he would let me. I hope he would._

_(You know you get all sorts of shit with AIDS? Like a colds not just a cold it’s a death sentence and you get all these open pus filled wounds and it’s disgusting. I bet it’s fucking painful. I should ask Ma about her friend in New York. I hope he’s okay.)_

_(... can you get AIDS from kissing?)_

_I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I thought writing it down would help but I’m more confused than i was._

_Is this love? Is this what love feels like? I want to call him. I want to call him and ask what it meant. It probably meant nothing, right?_

_I don’t know._

_EK.’ ”_

And Richie remembers. He _remembers_ now. He remembers stones on his window in the middle of the night, and the rain, and the way he’d gone out in his pyjamas, because he hadn’t seen Eds for like two weeks or something, figured Mrs. K had been keeping him hostage (and she had been). And he remembers the bruise on Eddie’s cheek, and he remembers — oh god — he remembers how Eddie’s lips had felt, how the kiss had been — how warm his mouth was against the cold rain, and how he tasted like the sea, all rain and salt because—

“You were crying.” But no, that’s not the kiss he’s writing about. That kiss was—

“That was after.” Eddie says weakly, heaving again, dry. “That was after.”

And he still can’t eat blackberries. Still gets uncomfortable around bees. Still flinches, a little, when someone moves too quickly towards him. “Holy shit.” Still weak, trembling all over like a newborn deer. “We— the blackberry patch in the Barrens, and you grabbed a fucking bee, and my legs hurt because of growing pains.” He wants to cry, suddenly, feels it in his throat, overwhelmed. “And you said race you. And you ran.”

“I…” Richie begins, and then Eddie looks at him, and—

On their knees in the Barrens, and the smell of antiseptic, and Eddie’s eyes on him, scared like he looks now, and then— and then Eddie had leaned forward and kissed him. Blackberries, that’s what he’d tasted like.

And how that had _felt_. 

And there was no whispered _sorry_ like in the Town House — the Town House, after Eddie had come back from the fucking dead, and Richie had thought that it was the first time he’d ever kissed him, only, he remembers now with startling clarity, it wasn’t.

It wasn’t even the second time. 

At fourteen, Eddie fucking Kaspbrak had kissed him on the mouth and after the initial shock had worn off, Richie had smiled at him like Christmas fucking morning. Like his heart beating like a hummingbird in his chest. Like _finally, finally._

And after that, Eddie just MIA for weeks. They would’ve been scared he was legitimately missing if Stanley hadn’t confirmed he’d seen him (twice to the group and three or four times to Richie “Yes, I’m _sure_ , Richie.”)

And then… midnight, a storm;

“That was the last time I saw you,” Richie says, softly. “She took you away. She took you away because of what we did.” He thinks _She_ hit _you because of what we did_ , and he realizes that all the things he was afraid of happening to Eddie because of him… that they’d already happened.

And above all of that, he remembers kissing him in the rain, like his life depended on it.

“Richie I—.” And god, god Eddie remembers. He remembers everything. The smile. The taste of berries on his mouth. How he’d looked at his mother defiant and angry after she’d slapped him and how he’d told her it didn’t matter where she took him, he’d still be who he was even if he had to hide it until he died. 

He remembers the bike ride in the rain in bare feet, remembers kissing Richie again and again and one last time and leaving his inhaler with him. The inhaler in forget me not blue. 

He remembers going home after that day - the beesting - remembers laying on his bed and beaming at the ceiling with his heart a butterfly in his chest, a balloon not in red, head spinning, giddy.

He remembers crossing his heart and pinkie swearing that he’d call Richie.

He remembers forgetting. But he doesn’t. Because Richie is here with him now. When have they ever been apart?

“ ‘Who would ever pick the Trashmouth at all?’ ” He quotes, shakily, and then he is crying. He’s crying, but he’s not. He’s just letting tears fall, staring at him like he’s seeing him for the first time. 

Richie remembers something he thought in the Town House, but didn’t say, but he says it now without thinking too hard about it. “The first boy I ever kissed was you.”

The first boy. The first _person_. The one he’d _always_ … and Eddie, Eddie who had always loved him. Who picked him, first. Who chose him back then, and chose him again at forty fucking years old, and who, for some insane reason, continues to choose him, now. 

And Richie surges forward and kisses him — heedless of the fact that there’s groceries to be put away, and ice cream melting on the counter, and the fact that Eddie just vomited a moment ago. He tastes like blackberries, anyway. A flavour Richie has avoided religiously as long as he can remember. Used to think he’d gotten sick on them, once, because of the way the thought of them used to make his stomach churn. When, really, it was the bruise on Eddie’s cheek, and the shape his crying mouth took, and the fact that he had called, for a while, and then he’d stopped calling and Richie had thought— Back then, when it was just him and Ben and Mike and Stan left in Derry — Bev in Portland and Bill gone, too, and Eddie…

He’d thought, back then…

He’d thought all kinds of horrible things. Because the Eddie he knew would never break a _cross your heart._

So much of his own shame, Richie realizes, has been tied up in the fact that Eddie had kissed him and cried when he left and crossed his heart, and then stopped calling. Like maybe he was ashamed of what they’d done. And Richie didn’t know it, then, because he didn’t understand, and didn’t know it later, because he couldn’t remember. But now he realizes that it was never true at all, that feeling of wrongness he’s carried so much of his life. Because it was never Eddie — never Eds kissing him and then changing his mind. No, it was Derry, and the forgetting that came once you set foot outside of it.

Eddie catches him, instinctively, bent back over the sink and eyes slamming shut and hands on his face and elbows tucked between their chests. “I’m sorry.” Wet and hoarse, emotion getting the better of him. “I’m sorry— I forgot— I didn’t mean to— I’m sorry—.”

So much of his life slotting into place all at once, trying to find Richie in the parts of his world where he didn’t exist, rage fuelling every argument he’d had at bars with his colleagues because they didn’t like the thought of two dudes kissing, allergic to blackberries, allergic to bees, allergic to fun. 

Always missing Richie. Richie, Richie, who he’d kissed and watched run, who he’d wanted to kiss for so long beforehand.

“I pick you, asshole. I pick the Trashmouth. I picked you then and I pick you now and in twenty seven years I’ll still fucking pick you so you can shove that in your pipe and fucking smoke it, you fucking dickhead.” Against his mouth, fingers still framing his head. “Fuck Bill. Bill doesn’t know what he’s fucking talking about.” Kissing him again, deeply, pulling him closer closer closer, using him to lever himself up onto the counter. 

And Richie laughs, sort of damply into his mouth, because he is, maybe, crying a little? Or on the edge of it, he isn’t sure. And maybe he’s been in love with Eddie for so long, and so often in his presence for the last year, that Eddie’s beginning to rub off on him, because Richie also sounds like he’s allergic to fun when he says: “Don’t fall into the garbage disposal,” and keeps kissing him fucking anyway. He pushes himself right up between Eddie’s legs, one hand clutching his thigh, the other on his neck, in his hair. He bites his lower lip, letting out this quiet, desperate sound.

Eddie, soft, on a sob: “How could I ever have forgotten you?” And somewhere in the living room he can hear Richie’s radio. 

_They're mopping up the butcher's floor_  
_Of your broken little hearts_

And yes. His heart is broken. It broke a thousand years ago in a front yard in Derry with kisses that tasted just like this. Eddie knocks Richie’s glasses askew as he lifts his t-shirt off of him, hands finding his shoulder blades, arms beneath Richie’s arms, nails digging in in an imitation of beestings and broken arms and the cut that brought them all back together.

“Do you believe me now? That I love you?” Because he knows Richie. Knows the insecurity bubbling in his blood. “I always did. I always did. I’m so sorry. I didn’t come back for you. I wanted to. I wanted you, Richie. I wanted you. I want you.”

His glasses clatter to the countertop as he sets them down, and then his hands are back in Eddie’s hair, on his face, on the hem of his shirt, pulling it over his head as his stomach flutters. His breath hitches messily in his throat. 

“I always believed you,” against his lips, because he did. He did. As much as he could. Only now it’s— now, he fucking remembers. “I know,” he says, and means it. “Oh, fuck,” He hitches him close, almost into his arms. Eddie’s light enough for him to do it so— so he does, feels him hook his legs around his waist. “I know,” into his mouth, breathing him in, breathing out shakily.

_Oh hey if I down him I can give him mouth to mouth._

They have always fucking been in love. And Derry couldn’t kill it.

“But you didn’t—” Eddie murmurs: “Fucking soup— could have killed you—.” Legs around Richie’s hips, tight, holding himself up with runners thighs as he crushes their noses together and he suddenly remembers so much.

He remembers Richie throwing stones at his window, too, grinning and holding up a grocery bag of candy after Ma wouldn’t let him go trick or treating. He remembers Richie with a skinned knee after falling off his bike and blood running down his calf and patching him up before he knew anything about AIDS. He remembers Richie biting his ice cream that same summer. He remembers— everything. He remembers everything. “You’re never allowed out of my sight ever again.” He’s only half joking, his kisses moving from his mouth to follow his nose, across his forehead, back down around his ear and along his jaw.

Richie has, somehow, found the couch and doesn’t quite drop him, but also doesn’t quite _lay_ him down onto it, and he tumbles over him. He says “I’m okay with that,” and wonders, briefly, if this happened to the others. Wonders why they, the two of them, forgot this. All of this. 

All of _this_.

Richie thinks, realizes, really, that he has never been so fucking loved. It takes a lot to not just start crying then and there, painfully hard and tangled up in Eds, beneath him, and breathless, god, he’s so— 

He starts laughing instead. Presses it into Eddie’s temple, into his cheek. He pulls back to wipe his face, sniffles, fixes him with slightly squinty gaze, and then breaks into a gale of laughter. It’s a lot. A lot at once. “Christ, Eds.” Hands on his stomach, his hips, hitching himself back so he can start on Eddie’s pants. 

Vaguely he thinks _groceries_ , and then, _fuck it._

 _Lube_ , Eddie thinks, somewhere in the tangled webs and deadlights of his memories and— “Lube.” Gasped, giggling, kicking his shoes off and shoving his jeans down. “Grocery bag.” But he doesn’t let him go, dragging him by his hair for a kiss, biting hard on his bottom lip. Thinks; _Richie could have fucked me in the kitchen and I wouldn’t have cared_ — thinks; _oh god, Richie_ — thinks; _please, please._ Pulls him back by his belt, mouth opening and then closing over the rapid pulse in his throat so he can taste as close to his life as possible. “I love you, I love you, I love you.” Springing out of him like rainwater, like blackberry juice, like blood. “God, I love you.”

His hand slides down the back of Eddie’s neck and he arches his head back, hips already rocking against his thigh. “Right,” he says, _lube_. “I’ll—” _I’ll go_ , he thinks, even as he slips his free hand beneath Eddie’s underwear, fingers wrapping around his cock, heavy and warm. “I’ll go...” he swallows.

“ _Lube_ ,” Eddie insists, but his eyes are clouding over, hips rocking up into his hand, mouth falling open in a gasp and they could be in the clubhouse. They could be in the Barrens. He feels so young and open and vulnerable. He says lube and thinks lube and then thinks please and cups a palm over Richie’s dick. “Let me ride you.” Breathless and wet, one hand in Richie’s belt and the other rubbing over the length of him. “Richie, please—.”

“Christ,” Richie breathes, goosebumps rushing up his arms as pulls back, because _yes, yes,_ he wants that. “Okay—” moans, hips jolting, once, into his hand, and then he’s trying to catch his wrists so he actually _can_ get the lube. His head is swimming. He has to kind of scramble away from him in order to actually drum up the willpower to stop touching.

Eddie laughs, high and hysterical, a teenage giggle as he wriggles out of his sweater and shirt, the takes his socks off as an afterthought, shouting; “Ice cream!” After him, half hanging over the arm of the sofa, arms outstretched because it lessens the distance and the sooner Richie is touching him the better.

Richie veritably _throws_ the ice cream into the freezer. Everything else — fuck, coffee cream — freezer, _no_ , fridge. (Doors slam, bottles rattle.) And then he finds the lube amongst the tomatoes (what the hell) — everything else can wait, he thinks.

Back to the couch, hands on Eddie’s hands, his arms, his shoulders, his face. He pushes him back and piles onto the sofa with him again, only this time he’s sitting up, pushing the lube into Eddie’s hands so he can undo his own pants. He’s barefoot, so he gets everything off in one. The interim reminds him of words that are not Trashmouth words. “I love you,” he says, like he’s just remembering. “I fucking— I love you, Eddie. Eds.” Eyes searching Eddie’s eyes. He doesn’t say it enough. He wants to.

It stops him, for a second, kneeling on the couch holding the lube between his legs unopened, cock so hard it’s purple. “I love you too.” Blinking, eyes meeting his and then dropping down over his body, up again. Dark, so dark and completely focused on him, not looking away as he unwraps the little plastic covering. As he sits up straighter, no longer on his haunches, reaching for him. “More than anything. Including medical documentaries. And tomato-mozzarella salad.”

“Wow,” Richie says, smiling. All trace of the tears from earlier gone from his face now, except, maybe, he’s a little darker around the eyelashes. “That’s a lot,” and he reaches for him, hands on his hips, cupping them in his palms. “You do it,” he says, eyes flickering to the lube. Wants his hands on him, wants their bodies connected, wants, wants, wants.

“It is a lot, thank you for acknowledging that.” Eddie’s laughing, soft, eyes down, shy, before he tilts Richie to lay back. Shifts them until his head is bolstered against the arm of the sofa, then climbs atop him to straddle his hips. Leans down to kiss him while he snaps the lube open, coats his fingers, tongues sliding together and Eddie thinks— _The first kiss wasn’t like this._ Thinks; _this is better._ Thinks; _I’ve wanted this for a lifetime._ He has to pull away to reach behind himself, thanking whatever it is up there that he can still bend this way, gasping as he slides a finger easily into himself up to the knuckle.

Richie slides his fingers down over Eddie’s cock, achingly slow, eyes dark and fixed on him, wanting to see what he can do to him, see how he _wants_. He’s _so_ hard, and lovely and familiar in Richie’s palm, and he knows he’s never felt that with anyone else. That familiarity, that _knowing_. “You’re beautiful,” he says, and means it. And he doesn’t mean beautiful like Bev, he means beautiful like _Eds_ , strong thighs and delicate collarbones and the dark line of hair on his stomach. Richie stops stroking him and touches that line with his thumb, traces it down. He means beautiful like the man he is — fingering himself open, vulnerable, filthy, trusting. He’s earned this, he thinks, they both have. Learned each other more than once, decades apart.

“Beep beep, Richie.” But he doesn’t mean it. He’s only saying it because Richie— like this, really Richie, like he was as kids, honest and so fucking courageous— it makes him flush deeper, makes him impossibly harder and he gets stuck on it. Repeats it in his head, _you’re beautiful_. Eddie is a man and he is beautiful. And he thinks those things about Richie all the time but never thinks of himself from the other man’s point of view. Why would he? He knows he’s skinny and small and pale and freckled. An ugly duckling—

And then he groans, dick leaking clear and hips stuttering and head tipping back because _God, yes, there_. Finds Richie’s hand with his own unoccupied one and guides it around so he can feel where he’s opening his own body for him. “Fuck, I take it back, unbeep— fuck—.”

“Jesus fuck,” Richie groans, and he tenses hard, gripping a handful of his ass, and then following the slender lines of his fingers, gentler, feels where they disappear inside of that heat again and again. “If you don’t let me fuck you soon I might actually die,” he says, and the joke shivers from his throat, comes out wavering, and his eyes are riveted on Eddie’s leaking cock, the line of it catching sunlight. Richie’s dick jerks in response and he squeezes his eyes shut, genuinely afraid he’s going to come untouched. “Please, Eddie—” He doesn’t beg often. Funnily enough, he can normally shut up during sex, or his brain just shuts down, capable of producing only vulgarities. He thinks Eddie likes it though.

And Richie’s right, because Eddie moans loud and his own dick twitches and he’s maybe too quick with the second finger, with the scissoring, with the hard shift of his body back into it because it burns and stretches and it’s like—

Like sun in his eyes and cleaning out an oath-cut.

Like seeing Richie through the trees and immediately stumbling and grazing his palms.

Like falling through a floor and breaking his arm.

And he hisses. Does it again and again and then pulls out, reaches behind him to grasp Richie firm. Whines low and long as he rocks back into him, the length impossible and delicious, eyes lidded staring down at his face, steadying himself with a hand on shoulder and the other over fragile thundering heart.

Richie stays as still as he fucking can, because he can feel the tension, the way they’ve rushed this. He keeps his eyes on Eddie’s though, mouth open and dark, panting softly. And then he’s all the way inside him, balls already so fucking tight. Clutching Eddie’s thigh, just below his hip with one hand, Richie arches his back, free hand skating up Eddie’s arm, his shoulder, finding his mouth. He touches his fingertips against Eddie’s lower lip, catches the sharp edge of his bottom teeth, softly, and pulls them gently, fingertips brushing his tongue, smoke-soft.

And Eddie doesn’t move, just sits there, body clenching and unclenching around him, the thigh under his hand twitching and trembling as he adjusts. He doesn’t see the need to move, really. Doesn’t want to rush it now Richie is inside him, where he belongs (or, sometimes, often now, where Eddie belongs in the heat of Richie. The thought brings another shudder, another lingering strain of blood in his cock), just sucks his fingers fully into his mouth and presses teeth against knuckle and whimpers.

He remembers, vaguely, in a muddy haze of sex driven mist, more innocent uses for that mouth. Like the cut up knees, the patching up, years before he knew what AIDS was, using his tongue to clean a paper cut on Richie’s thumb, because there were no other options. Richie offering him a half sucked tootsie pop in the school yard, the gnawed lines of shared pencils.

There’s just so much life behind them, and so much more to come, and he lathes that same tongue over the pads of his fingers now, rocks his hips just a little, just to reseat the pressure. Can feel spit collecting around Richie’s fingers, around the edges of his lips, whimpers again. Something which might have been Richie’s name were his mouth not as full as his body.

Richie’s eyes are fixed on him, riveted, almost black with desire and love. It’s a funny process, he thinks, because he feels like he’s been shedding pieces of himself since Eds came back, or since he lost him, really. Maybe since he saw him again. And while he’s been doing that — it feels like removing armour — Eddie’s been picking pieces up. He’s been recovering things like lost artefacts: parts of himself, parts of their history. And all this time, they’ve been fumbling through the dark, together — clinging to one another for trust and security and because he honestly can’t imagine doing anything else. But this, it’s like — kissing him back in 1990, kissing him at fourteen… they were always supposed to… 

Richie slides his fingers from Eddie’s mouth and wraps them around his cock, stroking a little out-of-sync with the rocking rhythm of Eddie’s hips.

And he remembers everything — the blackberries, the pain in his hand, the way he trained his eyes not to look when he wasn’t supposed to, which was almost always. Richie’s been catching glances his whole life, but now — it’s like coming out of the clubhouse and into the full light of the sun; squinting against that brilliance — now he can look at him full in the face. Now he can touch him anywhere — his mouth, his cock, his stomach (quivering with his breath) his heart. He can hold his eyes and know that this — this is real and true and theirs. It’s theirs, and they’ve kept it safe all these years.

And he stops feeling like he’s lost so much time. He’s always carried Eddie in his heart.

“Kiss me.”

Words he’s thought a thousand times — in the Barrens, in the clubhouse, in Eddie’s childhood bedroom (illicit), on the street in Derry, on the kissing bridge…

The shame he’s carried is leaving, has been spinning away for some time now; washed down some metaphorical drain somewhere. He’s not sorry to see it go.

And so Eddie does kiss him. Of course he does. Pulls Richie until he’s sitting, Eddie’s legs wrapped around his waist again (how Eddie went a lifetime without wrapping his legs around this waist, he’ll never know) neck bent to kiss him as deep as he can.

“Ben called you my man.” Breathlessly, like Richie’s stolen it, because maybe he has. “When you were playing father of the bride.” Licks into his mouth, quick and hot, groaning at the feel of Richie’s hand (huge, bigger than imagining, when he’s imagined it). He moves his body against him, tighter little circles now with their change in position, mouth dropping from his to pant against the hinge of his jaw.

Richie breathes a laugh, feels a strange swoop in his gut that is mostly pleasant — a little startled, as he always (still) is when their friends are so supportive. 

_Ben called you my man._

And Richie, still stroking him off, panting against Eddie’s cheek, feeling sweat collecting damply at his temple where his nose slides against that soft hair, Richie asks “Am I?”, pitching his voice lower, just to hear the answer.

“Yes.” Desperately, like it ruins him, Eddie’s entire body convulsing with it. Richie can say what he likes about them but his Voices are so intrinsically him even when he’s hiding behind them that every single one (apart from, maybe, the fucking matador one) lights a fire at the small of his back that whips all the way up his spine and sets off sparklers in his brain. Eddie tries, is always trying, all the time, to get them closer. His hands on Richie’s biceps, in his hair, against his chest, fingers finding the flutter in his wrist and then curling to join Richie’s hand around him.

He loves it like this. Slow but desperate and dirty, and maybe that’s why it had to be Richie. Why it has to be Richie. Because Richie’s the only one who can switch off the neuroses. Richie’s the only one who can take him and scribble over the worries and the anxieties with a pocketknife like Eddie's soul is a kissing bridge and Richie’s marking it for himself.

Richie kisses him long, deep, until he’s breathless. And he loves the way their hands fit together around Eddie’s cock, loves the way it feels to be inside him. He loves the way Eddie’s thigh muscles shake beneath his palm. He moves his hand to his lower back instead anyway, guides him, holds him close, until he’s pressing still, somehow, deeper.

And he thinks about that yes and he thinks about how much he’d like to say _you’re mine_ , but he’s only ever been able to think of them as _theirs_ because… because he’s fine, he’s fucking— jesus, he’s _elated_ that he’s Eddie’s. His man. _That’s your man._ But when he starts thinking thoughts like you’re mine he can only hear them in Mrs. K’s soft, smoker-sweet, and in Myra’s increasingly shrill fury.

Eddie’s belonged to too many people, in all the wrong ways. Richie… Richie bites Eddie’s jaw, sucks a love mark onto his neck, and wonders, though, if these marks he leaves isn’t saying the exact same thing…?

“Ah, Richie…” as Eddie’s head tips back, spare hand finding the back of his head and pressing him there harder, wanting teeth, wanting everything Richie is worrying about. Digs his heels into the small of his back and looks through his eyelashes at the ceiling.

At sunlight dappling through leaves. At stars, the nights he told Ma he was sleeping at Stanley’s and they all camped out in Richie’s back yard.

“Keep doing that.” Soft permission, consent, because being Richie’s and having Richie is so different to anyone else. There’s no ownership, not in the same way, and honestly Eddie would probably come and then die if he ever heard Richie say ‘you’re mine’ but he wants it anyway. Because if Richie says it, he can say it back. He can say ‘I’m yours’, confirm it in both of their minds, then ‘you’re mine’. Because he is. Has been since… since fourteen, and blackberry kisses, and not knowing what to do with his hands, and feeling Richie’s knuckles against his knee in the Derry dirt.

Richie does keep doing that. Makes one mark and then another, and lets himself bite (gently), but hard enough because he knows Eddie likes that, too. Sometimes his jaw shakes between what he wants and what Eddie wants, and he thinks, he hopes, he finds a happy medium most of the time. 

There’s a part of him that never wants to see blood on Eddie’s skin again. There’s a part of him that wants to send him into that shaking ecstasy that bruises sometimes create. It’s why he always makes them with his mouth, those bruises; with his teeth, his lips, his jaw tense from sucking capillaries to bursting, blooming red and purple. Because his mouth — the one thing he could never control, and the one thing he tries so hard to and _who would ever pick the Trashmouth?_ and then; who already had.

“I love you—” Another mark, just under his jaw, where his blood beats. “I love you, I love you so fucking— ah! Eddie—” He grips at the softer part of his back — just behind his left hip. Fuck, he’s so close.

And when Eddie thinks but doesn’t say _Richie_ , it’s high and strung out even in his thoughts, tangling with _I love you_ and _you’re mine_ and _I’m yours_ and _harder more_ always harder more like he can’t get enough of him.

He remembers how his stomach hurt, bolting water when he came back to life. He remembers how it hurt half an hour ago when he did the same after vomiting. Thinks he could drink Richie until he drowned.

And muffles the noise that he makes in Richie's hair, coming over their hands and stomachs like it’s his first time, endless and unforgiving, moving his hips until his muscles seize and he can’t— can’t— but still wants—.

“Come for me.” He doesn’t recognise his own voice, the desperate vibrato high tremble, fingers curling through the slick mess on Richie's abdomen.

So he does, of course. Like, could he ever have done anything else? He gasps once, against Eddie’s throat, and then arches his back as his hips lose rhythm entirely into Eddie’s heat, into the contraction of his body around him, and then he doesn’t know which one of them is pulse-beating like that, inside, which one of them is shuddering loose. He gets out this sound between gritted teeth, halfway a groan, tearing itself apart at the edges. And then his hands go soft. Slide up Eddie’s back and down again as he starts catching his breath, one hand palming Eddie’s neck and jaw, fingertips in faintly sweaty hair. He’s overcome, suddenly, and he grins, falling back against the couch as he laughs soft and sweet and still fucked out, exhausted.

“I’ve been— like physically remembering that kiss,” he says. It sounds totally crazy, he knows. “Both of them…, like before my head did. Since Bev and Ben got married, I think. Like… blackberries and — you now how on foggy mornings in Derry, the air smelled, sometimes, like the sea? Like that. At the back of my throat…”

 _You were crying_ , he thinks _in the rain_ and _blackberries, beesting…_

“Thought I was allergic to blackberries for twenty seven years.” Panting, collapsed, one hand tucked into Richie’s side and the other resting on his chest while he hides his face in his neck. “I’d always get a like—“ presses down, palm flat on pectoral. Inhales. Exhales. “And I—.” 

_See you later, Alligator._

_In a while, Crocodile._

“— I couldn’t say goodbye to people. You know, like we used to? Someone would say ‘see you later alligator’ to me and my brain would just—.” Makes a buzzing noise between his teeth, shakes his head and closes his eyes. “For what it’s worth, if you’d let me, I would have kissed your hand better.”

“You mean after I shoved it into your face? Richie asks him, remembering suddenly. 

“Yeah, when you shoved it in my face,” Eddie says, gentle, eyes closed.

“I actually pretty distinctly remember feeling like if I didn’t start running or howling at the moon or something I would actually fucking implode.” Richie goes very quiet for a moment or two, and then says “You always took care of all of us. You and your stupid fanny pack pharmacy. We all went to you for help, like you were everyone’s mom. And then, you remember how even after it was too babyish to go to you I still went? I’d hang back when it was supper time and Bill and Stanley had to go home, and then I’d start… ‘Hey I think this is getting an infection, it’s all warm.’ As long as I thought I could get away with it. And you’d always stay for that. Even if it made you late. I tried to make you late on purpose, sometimes, you know, for your mom’s stupid curfew, just… ‘cause I thought if you wanted to stay more than you were scared to be in trouble, that meant… like, I was special.”

Eddie’s eyes are still closed as he listens to him, lines on his face softening as he relaxes down down down into the warmth of Richie’s body. Safe. Like he always has been with him. Because Richie is many things but he’s never been cruel, and Eddie at fourteen saw it and Eddie at forty needs it. Because life has been so, so cruel for so long. And he’s so tired. “You were special.” He tells him, starting to rub his thumb over his skin, smile small and hidden against him. “You are special. But back then—. God, I was such a fucking creep.” Mirroring without knowing Richie's words about himself. “You’d hang back and bug me about ailments and all of my brain would light up like— like a fucking carnival stand. Like I knew you were kind of faking it? And every time I thought ‘oh holy shit, oh holy shit, here it comes,’ and I could never decide whether ‘it’ would be a kiss or a pop on the mouth.” Laughs softly, just a puff of air, really. “It depended on how annoying I thought I’d been.”

“You were annoying,” Richie says. “But you were the only one with as much fucking — feral chaotic energy as me. Or more, I think. As soon as I could see I was annoying people I just got more annoying because at least then I was doing it on purpose. Usually they’d just tune me out, but you just got madder,” he laughs, smooths a hand through Eddie’s hair, tugging gently where it’s longer. “I loved it.”

“Why do you think I’ve stuck to the old classics of ‘asshole’, ‘dickhead’ and ‘Trashmouth’?” Eddie grins, pushes his face firmer into Richie’s chest and leaves him a kiss. “It’s—, yeah, you made me fucking angry, because you just kept pushing buttons and pulling levers but— it’s weird, isn’t it? I felt like at least if we were bouncing off each other— like at least you were looking at me, you know? God, so dumb.”

But Richie gets it. He totally gets it, because that’s exactly how he’d felt. Eddie’s eyes on him, being the centre of those rapidfire monologues, and thirteen-year-old Richie lit up like a pinball machine. Lights and sounds and everything. “I think it’s adorable. God, Eds. You’re just so goddamn cute.” He pinches his cheek and laughs beneath him, pulling him closer with his free arm. 

“Fuck you.” But Eddie is positively beaming, finger marks blooming on his cheek from Richie’s pointer and thumb, lifting his head to look at him. And it’s like holding a negative over a developed photo. He sees Richie, forty years old and just as infuriating, sees him at fourteen all coke bottle lenses and sarcasm and defensive moves. Mental karate. Then thinks about what he must have been like at college, eyes weed blown and glasses better, curls thicker and unruly. All those awful shirts. He sees him now all jawline and the beginning of jowls, salt and pepper stubble and hair, angle unflattering and wonderful and real.

Thinks about—

Richie pouring cereal and splashing milk on his thumb and licking it off and feeling; marry me. Richie caterwauling along to Styx in the shower and towel drying his hair with his ass hanging out and; marry me. Richie, far away and in his own head, meeting his eyes over a coffee cup and smiling so suddenly it’s like the first burst of sunrise and; marry me.

He remembers milkshakes at the diner back home, remembers spitting out a mouthful of peanut butter sandwich because Richie had told him it was cream cheese, glaring daggers while Richie had crowed _I told you you’re not allergic._

Remembers how, in some way, he always ended up sitting next to him. At the cinema, in the library, the clubhouse, the Barrens. How Richie had clear pulled him across almost an entire garage when It had scared them so badly Eddie had wanted to faint. How Richie’s presence had been the only thing that stopped him.

Remembers watching Richie toss malt balls in the air to catch him in his mouth, eyes on a comic. How he still does it now when he’s reading the paper.

How Eddie, in every other hour of the day, catches Richie at an angle just like this. Real, and a little ugly, and how it makes his breath catch in his throat, how his toes tingle and his bones vibrate with needing to press a button. Pull a lever. Be looked at. Always. And—,

“— marry me.” It’s not romantic, and it just kind of— he vomits it up like blackberries, then goes still. Like if he moves, Richie will see him. Richie will see him and the illusion will shatter and— Eddie swallows. His throat clicks fear. And he swallows again.

Richie, not in Eddie’s head, hears — in what feels like fairly rapid succession for such disconnected thoughts — ‘Fuck you. Marry me.’

It feels exactly like those dreams he had so often as a kid. Falling and falling _awake_. His body actually jolts, beneath Eddie’s, and he says, all wit and vulgarities: “What?” Except it comes out startled and soft and not just a little bit confused, but his fingers twist softly into Eddie’s hair anyway and he thinks _It’s a joke, it has to be_ , and he thinks _I don’t think that’s funny_ , although, on some level, he’s sure that it is, with enough distance and perspective. He doesn’t even have his glasses on. Suddenly the whole thing seems a little dreamlike.

“Marry me.” Eddie repeats, and thinks _fuck, fuck_ with it drawn out like he’s been thrown out of a cliff. Over the top or underneath of that he thinks, a little hysterically, _the little dog laughed to see such fun and my massive goddamn trap ran away with the spoon_ , but his eyes are steady at least. At least his hands are steady, too. At least his internal panic is well hidden. He thinks. Maybe. Except his voice trembles on; “marry me, Richie.”

Richie shifts, then, has to. Has to see him. He shifts until they’re sitting up, legs all kinds of tangled. He’s got this smile on his face that’s not really meeting his eyes because this is absolutely some kind of joke, but he doesn’t get it because it’s not like there’s an audience, so why even bother pulling one over on him, but he— His eyes find Eddie’s and searches and searches, squinting a little without his glasses. It makes his brow furrow. But there’s something fluttering, glowing in his chest, and in his stomach — something fragile and defenseless. It’s a word. Just one. But it’s not the word he says. The word he says is “Seriously?” and it comes out almost annoyed. It isn’t. _He_ isn’t, but he doesn’t… well, fuck, he just doesn’t get it. Waits for the other shoe to drop.

“Are you waiting for me to get down on one knee and say please? Because I absolutely did not plan a proposal and I don’t have a ring.” Eddie's squinting right back, unsure, because Richie’s voice has an edge and yet doesn’t. Like he’s scared. Like Eddie is scared, too, right now. “But if that’s what you’re gonna wait for, I will absolutely drive to the nearest jewellers naked and get you a ring.”

He laughs, sharp and genuine. A good chuck, because _there’s_ the joke, that sly sarcastic wit Eddie has, always with a hint of sharpness, like he could really cut if he wanted to. 

Somehow, knowing that _this_ is the joke, Eddie’s response to his fuckwittery, and not the genuine question — demand really — of ‘marry me’ and Richie feels a little better. He shifts so that he’s a little straighter still, so that he has the use of his arms again, and they’re not just holding him up, and he rests his knuckles against the too-fast beat of Eddie’s own heart, just briefly. Then he pulls back, hand between them (there is, he realizes, some come drying in a slow sloping spiral down his wrist) and examines it. “I’ve never really been very partial to anything really flashy, but probably like a one carat diamond, you know? Round cut, none of that pear or marquise nonsense.” There’s a Voice in there, somewhere, he knows it. Only his own is shaking a little too much to make it a good one.

“You’ll get a fucking haribo gummy one if you’re not careful.” Eddie's hand catches his wrist, brings his attention back to his face, and rolls his eyes. “Will you marry me, Richie Trashmouth Tozier? Or are you going to make me sit here with my dick out all afternoon?” The come on Richie’s wrist, on his palm, is sticky. Suddenly Eddie itches all over. Nerves and anxiety roaring through his chest like flood water.

Richie meets his eyes as the doubts finally start crowding in, but they’re old fears, more habit than genuine, and there’s this ebbing tug away from his heart as they’re pulled out to the sea. He knows none of them are genuine, he knew, already — what his answer would be. He knew the moment the words had first come out of Eddie’s mouth — even if it was a joke, even if it was meant to be for a laugh and nothing else.

He thinks of about a hundred different ways he could spin it to make it funny but he thinks he will save that for his work and not for this moment which is real, and theirs, and means something. 

“I would very much love to do that,” he says. He says it unguarded, not flanked and padded by the jokes and teasing and Voices that he uses to protect himself. It’s just real. As real and messy as the two of them now — not perfect, not hidden at all, not even by evening darkness. The sun filters in through the west-facing windows and he slides his free hand over Eddie’s cheek and kisses him full on the mouth.

~

Ma says; _we’re leaving._  
Ma says; _getting you away from that filthy boy._  
Ma says; _I read your diary._

And of course. Of could she would do that. Eddie can’t remember ever having privacy, why would he expect it in this one singular instance? She backhands him before she storms out. Goes— Eddie doesn’t know where. But thunder cracks as a bruise starts to form on his cheek and he thinks— well, he thinks _fuck you_ and he thinks _no_ and he thinks _but Richie_. And he’s fourteen and it’s summer and this wasn’t supposed to happen. It can’t happen. He can’t just— he’s only just worked out— and it’s not fair.

Eddie doesn’t even, really, think about other options. Ma’s already violated his privacy, she’s already hit him, she’s already making him go.

He doesn’t want to go. It doesn’t matter what he wants. So he scales the drainpipe because fuck it if he rebreaks his arm then it’ll be her fault. And then he’s pedaling like the wind in his pyjamas through the rain to throw stones at Richie’s window.

~

Richie doesn’t know what time it is, only that he wasn’t sleeping, not really, until he was. Or he must have been, because he jolts with a start when something raps against his window and his glasses are off so he fumbles around for his light switch blindly. The metal cord hits the metal base of the lamp and clangs, and Richie tenses his shoulders, because if his parents hear... before he finally grabs at it and pulls it on. Light floods the room, and he fumbles for his glasses. It doesn’t register until a moment later that the first thing he felt was fear. Fear that there was going to be something in the darkness, fear that there would be a white-painted face in his window.

But that’s done now, he has to remember. Or maybe he has to believe it, only he doesn’t… not entirely.

His second thought is that it’s hail, it’s hailing outside. But that’s not it, either. Two more little taps, almost tentative. Richie climbs out of bed, and creeps to the window half scared that that little square of light shining out onto the lawn at night is going to be occupied by a red balloon…

But then. “Eds?” Richie says, the name bursting softly out of his mouth before he even gets the window open. He does now, hastily unlocking it (he never locked it before last summer) and shoving it open. His forearms are immediately wet. Eddie’s soaked. Also he’s not wearing his raincoat. And— _shit_ , Richie thinks. 

He makes a quick, slightly flailing gesture _hang on_ and then disappears, reappears, pulls the window shut, and then disappears again. 

He creeps past his parents’ room, past his sister’s room. Ear to the door, it sounds like she’s out anyway. Probably with her boyfriend. He makes a mental note of that to use as collateral later if he needs it and makes his way down the stairs.

He doesn’t even bother to put his shoes on and, barefoot, slips out the back door like a blue-pyjama’ed ghost and is immediately wet. It’s really coming down. He finds Eddie in the darkness of the yard. His window is the only one lit up. “Jeeze, man, is your mom holding you hostage or what?” he asks as he reaches him, because he hasn’t seen him in like two weeks — it’s just been phone calls, all rushed and quiet. Mrs. K’s never been pissed like this before. He wonders what she thinks Eddie did. 

He reaches out and prods his shoulder “Where’s your rain gear, little duck?” he teases. “You don’t wanna catch a cold.” But he’s talking ‘cause he’s nervous. Something feels wrong. Something’s wrong in Eddie’s eyes.

And Eddie flinches. He flinches away from Richie and wants to go to him and wants to wrap himself around him like a coat because—. It’s raining. It’s raining so hard and Eddie thinks— colds and flu and pneumonia, bronchitis, fevers.

“She’s making me leave.” He tells the weathervane on Richie’s roof, blinking rapidly against the downpour, PJs sticking to him. “She’s making me move away.” Runs a palm over his face and shakes away water - it makes no difference but he doesn’t know what else to do with his hands.

“She— I don’t know when but she read my diary. She’s been keeping me in that fucking house giving me pills I don’t fucking need and making me do the most menial— who the fuck needs a clean basement anyway? Who sees a basement and goes ‘oh this could be cleaner’? She’s just fucking mad that we kissed.” And it feels good to verbalize it. “And I couldn’t let her take me away without seeing you first and— fuck rain gear. I have fucking priorities.”

Richie blinks, drawing back a little bit. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands and that leaves him feeling more awkward than ever. Like how he doesn’t know what to do with his height, anymore, and how he doesn’t know how not to knock off of things or knock them over, or how to stop skinning his knees in the dirt. 

This feels like that — like skinned knees, only it’s like inside. This hot burning feeling that he can’t place as a kid. As a kid it makes his nose sting and his eyes burn. As an adult he will register it as shame.

_She’s making me move away._

From what Richie thinks. Because it cannot be here. It cannot be him. He laughs because it’s ludicrous, but the words are sinking in like the rain, pelting him _Mad that we kissed— she’s making me— clean basement— we kissed— she’s making me move— we kissed— away— away—._

And he has so many questions. He’s so _fucking_ angry. Because this can’t just happen. He’s so fucking angry that… 

That Mrs. K…

For one swift, horrible moment, Richie wishes her dead. Legitimately, genuinely. It flares in his chest like fire and gas. _Whoosh_. He wants to say _what?_ He wants to say _She can’t._ What he says, though. What his fucking mouth opens and says is “You have a _diary_?” Because everything else is too hard. It’s like that dam they built last summer, the one that was Bill’s idea first, until Ben’s idea made it work. He thinks if he says what he wants to say, if he ways what’s building in his chest, he’ll break. He’ll cry.

“Yes I have a fucking diary is that really what you’re focusing on right now?” And Eddie beats him to the punch; is crying, letting it mix with rain water, shoulders moving up and down like it’s exaggerated. 

It’s not. He’s just... a kid. A kid who has to follow his mother. And he recognises the set in Richie’s face, the squaring of too skinny shoulders on a too tall frame and he wants to say something — anything — else to make this unreal.

He thinks it would probably be quite hard to Pennywise to manifest his true deepest fear.

“I don’t know what to do, Richie. She— knows, about the beesting.” Because he can’t say it again, not the way he did, when Richie is so pointedly ignoring it. When he’s skirting around it like a kiss is something to feel guilty about. “She hit me.”

And it’s like Richie’s hearing the words before they come out. Because his eyes track that bruise just before Eddie says it — that she hit him — and his hand goes out to Eddie’s face and he touches him so goddamn easily just as he says those words _she hit me._ Richie turns Eddie’s face, and then takes his shoulders and turns them both to the light so he can see it. He doesn’t let him go. Eddie’s shoulders shake beneath his hands and — he was always small, but he feels smaller, now.

“You can’t go,” Richie says, and voice wavers and cracks. He’s too old for his voice to break, he thinks. “You can stay here— my sister’s going back to college anyway. You can have her room, you can just stay here. I’ll tell my dad what she did to you.” But even as he says it, he wonders… if…

If that means he’ll have to tell his dad what they did in the Barrens too. But it doesn’t _matter_ , if Eddie can stay. What if she hits him again? And suddenly (it’s ridiculous, but) he’s thinking about basement dust and didn’t Mrs. K. think about _that_ before she sent Eddie down there to clean? 

“I have to go, Rich. She’s still my Ma.” Even though he doesn’t want to. Even though there’s a part of him who hates her now. But it’s good, the contact—. Richie touching him. He curls small against him and closes his eyes, rests the bruised part of his face on his shoulder and sighs. “This was gonna be such a great summer and she’s taken it away.” But there’s a part of him—. It’s his own fault, too. He shouldn’t have written it down. He should have locked it up safe in his heart and left it there.

Richie feels his certainty sliding out of him as swiftly as sand from an hour glass, even as he wraps him up in a soggy hug. “But— you don’t, Eds. You don’t _have_ to go. You’re better off without her anyway, she’s like…” 

_She’s crazy_ , he thinks. _She’s crazy or something._

It’s cold out here. Cold rain. Like summer’s already ending.

“I do have to, though, Richie. You know I do.” He fists his hands in his pyjama top and sniffles. “She doesn’t have anyone else. I don’t have anyone else. I can’t just—. And then we’d have to live under the same roof and you know we’d kill each other and I don’t want to put that on your parents.”

 _Me_ , Richie’s about to say, _you have me_ but then Eddie’s talking about how they’d kill each other and Richie thinks — for one dark moment — _he doesn’t want to._ “Ben’s then. Or Bill—...”

But it’s _Georgie’s_ room... fuck. That wouldn’t— they couldn’t.

“ _Richie_.” It’s sobbed against his shoulder, trying and trying to get closer. “I _can’t_. I _want to_ but—. She’s my mom, man. She’s my mom.” And he thinks, _God, just let me have this summer. Let me have this summer wrapped up in Richie’s arms so we know for sure we love each other before I disappear from his life._

“Where are you going?” Richie asks, and his voice is creaking again. He swallows against it.

“I don’t— she didn’t tell me. She just locked me in my room and—. I don’t even know where she is right now.” Getting boxes from the pharmacy, maybe? Stocking up on pills? He shivers. Clings tighter. “I’m kind of scared of what she’d do if I tried—.”

Richie pushes him back, holding his shoulders. He ducks down so they’re eye to eye and, Jesus, it feels like a long way down, now. “What if she’s like lost it, man? Listen to yourself, listen to what you’re saying. She’s going to hurt you.” His hand flexes on the shoulder below Eddie’s bruised cheek, and he thinks: _More_. And there’s this tightness in his throat that hurts and aches until he breathes in against it, only it’s a sob.

“Maybe it’s just Derry, you know?” Eddie begins— “Maybe it’s just Derry? She might be okay away from Derry.” Desperately, hands coming up to flutter uselessly over his elbows, face screwed up against the tears. “I shouldn’t have written it down. She wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t written it down.”

Richie feels sick, and scared. Most of all scared. “Shh, shut up, it’s not your fault. Eddie—” And he searches for, clasps at those hands, gets one and tangles their fingers messy, painfully tight. He can’t cope with him leaving so he latches onto something else. “You know that, right? It doesn’t fucking matter if you wrote it down or not.” And he is crying now, really crying. His words break up into a mess of tears and gasping. “She’s such a fucking— she’s horrible. She fucking horrible, she _can’t_ just—“

But she can. Because she’s the grown up. And for the million time in the space of a year Eddie thinks grown ups aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. They’re cowardly and weak, weaker than a bunch of kids on bikes with baseball bats.

And Eddie is brave. He knows he is brave. Has known it deep down for longer than the clown tormented them. So he uses the hands clasped around Richie’s to tilt himself forward and up, and Richie forward and down, and knocks their noses together. They’re still crying, both of them. Eddie's face is still twisted with it, bottom lip like a caricature of someone heartbroken. “This was gonna be such a good summer.” Because he’d made it so already. He will never taste blackberries in the same way again.

Somewhere, desperately, Richie’s thinking _Bill will know what to do_ , and also he’s thinking _Mrs. K’s gonna kill him for being out here without rubber boots_ , because somewhere in between he learned her rules for Eddie, too. Sometimes, doglike, he predicts the beeping of Eddie’s watch just before it happens. It accompanied the sinking feeling in his stomach. “You have to tell me where you are,” he says, and at the back of his mouth he tastes blackberries. “Just call me and tell me and I’ll get everybody to come. We’ll visit you. All the time. So— it can still be a good summer. She never even has to know.“

Because, Richie thinks, he can’t be leaving _Maine_. Maine’s the whole world.

“I will. I’ll call. I’ll call you every day.” And he will, for a while. Before he forgets. Before Derry loosens its hold. But for now he just aches and thinks _I’ll call_ and doesn’t even _care_ about the others because they’re not _Richie_ and he’s not— Eddie doesn’t know where his brain is going with that, outside of _they wouldn’t taste like you, they wouldn’t need to be pull out the stinger, they don’t need me to be brave like you do._

And he presses their mouths together again because if he’s leaving he’s leaving with Richie on his lips.

Richie’s breath hitches in a gasp, but he kisses him back. He doesn’t know how to hold himself or what, exactly to do — he’s never been kissed before now, not before that day in the Barrens. He feels only slightly more prepared for this one, and so he clings to Eddie’s fingers and clutches his free hand at his side, rain sliding over his knuckles.

It’s messy, a little. Eddie sobs or gasps and Richie’s too slow and it’s wet— it’s raining and they’re both crying and he doesn’t know what to do with his mouth not really. _Can only virgins see this stuff?_ He’s such a liar. But not when it counts. It’s why he didn’t say anything to Henry Bowers in the arcade when he called him a faggot. Because if this is it, if this is what it _feels_ like, then— well— 

He catches Eddie’s face in both hands and chases his mouth, their noses pressing too hard, his glasses fucking in the way, and he kisses him hard, again. And then he pulls back, breathless, thin chest heaving. His eyes are huge and wet and solemn behind his glasses. There’s words on his tongue that burn too much, even in a Voice. Instead he says “Y’all come back now, ya hear?” And it’s actually passable. He almost doesn’t sound like Richie Tozier. At least, he thinks, he doesn’t sound like Richie Tozier crying.

“See ya later, Alligator.” Eddie says in response, hair flattened to his head in the rain, his fingers still tangled with Richie's even as he steps away. 

Richie hangs on. Tight. “In a while, Crocodile,” he says. And he cannot fathom how to let go. 

They stay tangled until their arms are outstretched and connected in the storm.

And Eddie sniffs, thick and messy, and laughs but it doesn’t reach anything meaningful. He suddenly understands the pop ballads about heartbreak that his mom listens to while she does housework. He understands the way she became pale and drawn after Daddy died. Because the ache in his chest is more than that. It glows in him and if he looked down he wouldn’t be surprised if there was heat and light emanating from his ribcage.

But there isn’t. There’s just all this pain kept inside, wrapping around his bones. And Richie’s fingers are still in his.

“I’ll call, Richie. I’ll call all the time. And-and I’ll write, if she won’t let me call. I’ll write you. All the time. I promise. I cross my heart. I pinkie fucking swear, okay?” Because he can’t lose Richie. Not like this. Not like this.

Richie smiles at him, but it’s not real. He doesn’t ever remember faking a smile before — not to one of the Losers. To his aunts, yes. To his parents when they get him something he doesn’t want for Christmas, like a new pencil case or something. (He likes getting socks). He always reminds himself that Stanley doesn’t even have Christmas, and so he should be grateful. "You better," he says, and then he does let go, catches Eddie's pinky with his and it feels childish and silly but it also doesn't. It also feels huge and important and like without it—… somehow—… 

They pinky swear, and when Richie lets him go, their connection breaks. "Now cross your heart," he says, voice barely audible over the rain.

... He feels like if they don't, they'll forget.

And Eddie does, and he turns to go, and he makes it down to the end of the yard where his bike is laying on the pavement before he’s turning around and sprinting back to him, digging in his pocket for his inhaler, pressing it into Richie’s hands.

And meeting his mouth again. Just once more. To make sure they’ll remember. 

He runs before Richie can say — do — anything else. Because one more word from him and he really will move into Peg’s room, consequences be damned.

It’s lucky, really, that there’s no traffic on the roads. He can’t see to pedal and does it anyway. The lights are off when he gets back to his house, and the climb back up to his bedroom is slippery, but he manages it.

He doesn’t manage to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

>  _The long love that in my thought doth harbor,  
>  And in mine heart doth keep his residence_  
> \- Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder
> 
> If you would like to read the kisses they had that summer, you can find them below:
> 
> [ **And death i think is no parenthesis**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27454285) by [slowlimbs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slowlimbs/pseuds/slowlimbs)  
> [ **Kisses are a better fate than wisdom**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27489247) by [liminal weirdo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liminalweirdo/pseuds/liminalweirdo)
> 
> The song Eddie hears on the radio ( _"They're mopping up the butcher's floor of your broken little hearts"_ ) is from O Children by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
> 
> __
> 
> Join us on tumblr!  
> [ **liminalweirdo**](https://liminalweirdo.tumblr.com/) and [**slowlimbs**](https://slowlimbs.tumblr.com/)


End file.
